7.  The applicant was born in 1977 and lives in St Petersburg.
8.  The applicant is the editor-in-chief of a publishing company and of an aviation magazine. He is also the chairperson of the St Petersburg branch of the Glasnost Defence Foundation, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) monitoring the state of media freedom in the Russian regions, which promotes the independence of the regional mass media, freedom of speech and respect for journalists’ rights, and provides legal support, including through litigation, to journalists.
9.  He subscribed to the services of several mobile-network operators.
10.  On 23 December 2003 he brought judicial proceedings against three mobile-network operators, claiming that there had been an interference with his right to the privacy of his telephone communications. He claimed that pursuant to Order no. 70 (see paragraphs 115-22 below) of the State Committee for Communications and Information Technologies (the predecessor to the Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies – “the Ministry of Communications”), the mobile-network operators had installed equipment which permitted the Federal Security Service (FSB) to intercept all telephone communications without prior judicial authorisation. The applicant argued that Order no. 70, which had never been published, unduly restricted his right to privacy. He asked the court to issue an injunction ordering the removal of the equipment installed pursuant to Order no. 70, and to ensure that access to mobile-telephone communications was given to authorised persons only. The Ministry of Communications and the St Petersburg and Leningrad Region Department of the FSB were joined as a third party to the proceedings.
11.  On 5 December 2005 the Vasileostrovskiy District Court of St Petersburg dismissed the applicant’s claims. It found that the applicant had not proved that the mobile-network operators had transmitted any protected information to unauthorised persons or permitted the unrestricted or unauthorised interception of communications. The equipment to which he referred had been installed to enable law-enforcement agencies to conduct operational-search activities in accordance with the procedure prescribed by law. The installation of such equipment had not in itself interfered with the privacy of the applicant’s communications. The applicant had failed to demonstrate any facts which would warrant a finding that his right to the privacy of his telephone communications had been violated.
12.  The applicant appealed. He claimed, in particular, that the District Court had refused to accept several documents in evidence. Those documents had included two judicial orders retrospectively authorising the interception of mobile-telephone communications and an addendum to the standard service-provider agreement issued by one of the mobile-network operators. One of the judicial orders in question, issued on 8 October 2002, authorised the interception of several people’s mobile-telephone communications during the periods from 1 to 5 April, 19 to 23 June, 30 June to 4 July and 16 to 20 October 2001. The other judicial order, issued on 18 July 2003, authorised the interception of a Mr E.’s mobile-telephone communications during the period from 11 April to 11 October 2003. As to the addendum, it informed the subscriber that if his number were used to make terrorist threats, the mobile-network operator might suspend the provision of the telephone service and transfer the collected data to the law-enforcement agencies. In the applicant’s opinion, the judicial orders and the addendum proved that the mobile-network operators and law-enforcement agencies were technically capable of intercepting all telephone communications without obtaining prior judicial authorisation, and routinely resorted to unauthorised interception.
13.  On 26 April 2006 the St Petersburg City Court upheld the judgment on appeal. It confirmed the District Court’s finding that the applicant had failed to prove that his telephone communications had been intercepted. Nor had he shown that there was a danger that his right to the privacy of his telephone communications might be unlawfully infringed. To establish the existence of such a danger, the applicant would have had to prove that the respondents had acted unlawfully. However, mobile-network operators were required by law to install equipment enabling law-enforcement agencies to perform operational-search activities and the existence of that equipment did not in itself interfere with the privacy of the applicant’s communications. The refusal to admit the judicial orders of 8 October 2002 and 18 July 2003 in evidence had been lawful, as the judicial orders had been issued in respect of third persons and were irrelevant to the applicant’s case. The City Court further decided to admit in evidence and examine the addendum to the service-provider agreement, but found that it did not contain any information warranting reconsideration of the District Court’s judgment.
14.  It can be seen from a document submitted by the applicant that in January 2007 an NGO, Civilian Control, asked the Prosecutor General’s Office to carry out an inspection of the Ministry of Communications’ Orders in the sphere of interception of communications in order to verify their compatibility with federal laws. In February 2007 an official from the Prosecutor General’s Office telephoned Civilian Control and asked for copies of the unpublished attachments to Order no. 70, saying that it had been unable to obtain them from the Ministry of Communications. In April 2007 the Prosecutor General’s Office refused to carry out the requested inspection.